1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a light emitting diode (LED) unit, and more particularly to an LED unit incorporating a plurality of LEDs which can interlock with each other. Each LED has a self-locking capability.
2. Description of Related Art
LEDs have been available since the early 1960's. Because of the relatively high light-emitting efficiency of LEDs, nowadays LED usage has been increased in popularity in a variety of applications, e.g., residential, traffic, commercial, industrial settings. In such applications, in order to generate sufficient light from a single lamp, a large number of LEDs is often arranged closely on a printed circuit board in the single lamp; however, such close arrangement of the LEDs on the printed circuit board may cause heat generated by the LEDs not able to be timely dissipated since a poor heat conducting capability of the printed circuit board, which results in overheating or even malfunction of the LEDs. Thus, many attempts are tried in order to simultaneously give attention to both of the sufficient light and timely heat dissipation of the LED applications.
A type of LED lamp comprises a heat sink and a plurality of LEDs mounted on the heat sink. The heat sink sequentially forms a dielectric coating and circuit traces on a surface thereof, and defines a plurality of voids to separate the circuit traces. Each LED is mounted over a corresponding void, with two electrical leads thereof connected to two adjacent circuit traces; thus, when a current is input to the LEDs via the separated circuit traces to activate the LEDs, the heat generated by the operating LEDs can be rapidly dispersed to atmosphere via the heat sink.
However, the LEDs of this type LED lamp should be mounted on the heat sink along the circuit traces; in other words, an arrangement of the LEDs on the heat sink is confined by routes of the circuit traces. Therefore, the LEDs are unable to be freely mounted on the heat sink, but can only be positioned at predetermined locations. In addition, a shape and a size of the heat sink also restrict the number of the LEDs; if more LEDs are desired to be mounted in the lamp for emitting more light, the heat sink should be changed to a larger one to provide a more large mounting surface; such a change hinders the manufacturing and design flexibility.
What is needed, therefore, is an LED unit which can overcome the above-mentioned disadvantages.